The ex-Credit Suisse bankers behind Global Infrastructure Partners are best-known for building one of the world’s largest investment firms. Now they’re also forging something else: family offices.
At least four of GIP’s six founding partners have started or expanded efforts to build specialized firms overseeing their fortunes since BlackRock Inc., led by Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink, bought their company for about $12.5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Michael McGhee and Raj Rao both recruited finance professionals to run their family offices last year, with McGhee establishing his firm at the time of the GIP sale in late 2024. Private investment firms for “Bayo” Ogunlesi and Matthew Harris have separately boosted investments by their family offices in recent months, in a US biotech startup and fund supporting American agriculture.
The four men have a collective net worth of at least $3.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Their family office activity reflects a focus on protecting fortunes that expanded rapidly in recent years after the boom in private market assets.
“For billionaires following a liquidity event, the primary motivation is rarely financial return alone: It is the desire to create and institutionalize a lasting legacy,” said John Prince, founder of family office platform Respada.
GIP’s founders form part of a wave of private market tycoons who are joining the Silicon Valley elite, hedge fund veterans, logistics barons and other rich individuals turning to family offices as their fortunes grow in scale and complexity.
A boom in mergers and acquisitions for private market firms – driven in part by investors shifting away from liquid assets that traditionally powered financial markets – has helped to accelerate those efforts. BlackRock alone has committed more than $25 billion over the past two years to muscle in on private markets, betting that the traditional 60-40 split of stocks and bonds is no longer enough for investment portfolios.
That M&A wave has helped to create vast wealth in short order for some private market founders as they’ve monetized stakes in closely held firms and, as with GIP, shifted those assets into publicly traded companies. A trio of billionaires behind private market firms Coller Capital and Blue Owl Capital Inc. – also involved in M&A deals as recently as last month – have also set up or expanded family offices to manage their wealth within the past four years.
“I do see the potential for more consolidation,” said Miao Wang, a Luxembourg-based funds and asset management partner for law firm A&O Shearman. “It’s a long-term structural shift.”
At least a fifth of the world’s 500 richest people on Bloomberg’s wealth index now have a family office, helping oversee fortunes totaling more than $5 trillion. These loosely regulated, often secretive firms have proliferated over the past two decades, pushing into markets for venture capital, real estate and even buyouts for listed companies.
McGhee, GIP’s 69-year-old deputy chairman, established his family office, Corysande, in October 2024 as BlackRock completed its takeover of the firm he helped establish two decades ago. The London-based firm received $473.5 million in BlackRock stock that month, while tapping JPMorgan Chase & Co. veteran Chitra Khatri last year to lead its activities, according to registry filings.
“What we’re doing is putting some structure around the family office following the GIP transaction,” Khatri, 40, also Corysande’s chief investment officer, said in a statement. “The ambition isn’t to be overly complex or promotional, but simply to build a thoughtful, well-run investment platform.”
GIP Chief Operating Officer Rao, 54, last year recruited Jordan Williams, a former executive at multi-family office Eighteen48 Partners, to take the helm of CarryBeach, his private investment firm. He’s trademarked the family office’s name as well, describing its activities as including portfolio investment management and real estate, filings show.
Ogunlesi, 72, and Harris, 62, established their family offices — Five Raynham and Bedari Collective — before GIP’s sale. Ogunlesi’s firm invested in a late-phase fundraising round for US drug developer Lumen Bioscience late last year. Harris’ family office, meantime, supports his philanthropic work and in September invested in Mad Capital, a credit firm that provides loans to help US farmers shift to more sustainable practices.
A representative for GIP’s founding partners, who also include former General Electric executive Bill Woodburn and Jonathan Bram — declined to comment.
Preqin founder Mark O’Hare is also reshaping his family office following BlackRock’s buyout of his London-based provider of private markets data last year for about $3.2 billion in an all-cash deal.
He’s already mapped out how he’ll deploy the roughly $2.6 billion he and his wife received through the transaction. Their family office, Valhalla Ventures, is allocating about 70% of its portfolio outside public markets, the 67-year-old British native said in a November interview with SuperReturn Europe, citing secondaries and private credit as possible investment areas through a small group of funds.
A Valhalla representative said the firm is is a patient, long-term investor and declined to comment on individual allocations.
“Diversification can be overdone,” O’Hare, worth about $2.2 billion according to Bloomberg’s wealth index, said in the interview. “We want to have, and do have, a lot in private capital.”
The GIP founding partners’ bet on selling their firm for a mix of cash and stock is already paying off. BlackRock shares have risen more than 10% since the deal closed, adding at least $200 million alone to the stake that Ogunlesi – the biggest beneficiary of GIP’s sale – now commands in the firm.
While each of GIP’s executives have become ultra-wealthy in the business of managing external capital, their family offices allow them to embrace an approach few institutional firms can adopt.
“We don’t have any fixed allocation or deployment targets,” Jason Chang, Bedari Collective’s head of investments, said in an August interview. It’s “the purest form of investing.”
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